


king of shadows, king of sand

by Reavv



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, 나 혼자만 레벨업 | Solo Leveling (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Gen, Ignores later half of Solo Leveling Canon, Multi, Necromancy, Survival, Worldbuilding, canonical levels of overpoweredness, infrastructure and building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27748921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reavv/pseuds/Reavv
Summary: Jin-Woo doesn't know where he is, really, but it's so far been the weirdest dungeon he's woken up in yet.
Comments: 50
Kudos: 282





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ive been poking away at a Solo Leveling idea for a while and finally got the courage to actually write it. Please let me know if I've made any mistakes on naming or culture!! 
> 
> Also, since I really don't want to deal with the racism inherent in DA "white dude's version of medieval fantasy" I'm gonna pretend Thedas is more multicultural than it actually is
> 
> As always, join my discord to talk fic and get sneak peeks: [ here](https://discord.gg/cun3KPZ)

Jin-Woo isn’t quite sure where he’s ended up, if he’s honest. He assumes it’s a dungeon of some kind, considering the kilometres of sand and wind that stretch out before him, but he doesn’t remember walking through a gate. He doesn’t remember much, if he is honest, of the last couple days. Something to do with one of the guilds, and a potential S-Rank dungeon break in America.

Trying to exchange places with one of his Shadows back home leaves him with a headache and nausea he shouldn’t be capable of feeling anymore, and the second time he passes out on the dunes while the sun bakes down on the back of his neck he decides to stop making the attempt.

All his other powers seem to work properly, from what he can see. He won’t be dying of thirst anytime soon, at least, and he can call on his Shadows as usual. There’s nothing living that he can see that he can test the rest on, but besides being stuck in the dungeon for now, he hasn’t noticed anything out of order.

No doubt this is something orchestrated by the system, for whatever reason. Another test, a quest he doesn’t remember accepting.

“Beru,” he mutters, sheltering his eyes from the glare on the back of Kaisel. “Scout ahead. Report back if you see any signs of life, but do not engage.”

The ant king bows before launching himself up into the sky. Jin-Woo would follow, but the sun is already setting, and Beru’s eyes are more suited for hunting prey in the dark than his are. Instead, he jumps down from the wyvern’s back and gestures to the rest of the milling Shadows.

“We’re setting up camp for now. You—” He points to a group of low level soldiers. “Make a perimeter ten meters out, evenly spaced.”

He glances back out at the horizon, where the vague haze of what he’s pretty sure is a sandstorm is gathering. A glance at the system shop shows that he should be set for a couple weeks, at least, even if it’s storming the whole time. He’d rather not spend all his gold on otherwise useless equipment, however. Especially if this is a test, where healing is restricted.

In fact, he wonders if this might be the punishment desert from his earlier levels—it’s been a while since he’s failed a quest and been sent there, but it would explain why some of his powers are restricted and not others. He hasn’t been attacked by anything yet, but the system is tricky enough he wouldn’t be surprised if it’s waiting for something before unleashing even stronger enemies.

“See if you can find some shelter,” he mutters to Kaisel, shielding his eyes against the setting sun. “I’m not sure any of the tents from the shop will hold up to a sandstorm.”

The wyvern screeches in reply, before launching itself up into the sky to sweep the surroundings. Worst comes to worst, Jin-Woo will set up a tent under Kaisel’s wings and tough out the storm, but if there’s any naturally formed shelters in the area, he would prefer using them.

Considering the way the system likes to play with him, he’s sure there’s something somewhere. Old ruins, a dangerous cave system, something.

He spends the rest of the time while waiting going over his powers and abilities, just to make sure nothing else is restricted. As far as he can tell, the only thing he can’t do is use the Shadows to exchange with the ones he knows he has back home. Exchanging between a shadow in the desert does seem to work, however, even if he is a little annoyed that now he has to wait another three hours until it recharges again.

He almost thinks they’re not going to find anything before the storm hits, but it ends up being Beru who reports back first with the first clue that the desert isn’t as it seems.

“This does seem to suggest this is a dungeon,” Jin-Woo muses, leaning over the top of the dune to see the structure the ant king is pointing out. “Even though the ambient mana of the sands would indicate otherwise.”

“ **The air is quite stale,** ” Beru agrees, clacking his mandibles together. “ **No living creatures detected in the ruins and no magical traps.** ”

Jin-Woo rubs the back of his neck in thought, eyes taking in the details of the crumbling stone and windswept sand. Just because you can’t detect high concentrations of mana doesn’t mean something isn’t dangerous—he knows quite well, reminded once again of the double dungeon. The architecture isn’t quite the same, even from what he can see past the weathering and damage. It has the same sort of empty expectancy. As if it is safe, for now, but that could change.

“Be alert,” he finally says, decided. “But if there’s something in there, I want to go say hi.”

Tank and Iron both roar their agreement, causing Igris to take a step back, looking resigned to the exuberance. Jin-Woo has to flash a grin at the knight’s oddly expressive face—although frustrating sometimes, the slowly expanding personality of the upper-level Shadows is oddly charming.

Sliding down the sand dune to the top of the stone structure reveals more details, including what looks like a semi-circle of broken arches half hidden in the sand, all pointed towards the centre, where a small squat dome juts out of the ground. Pacing the outside of the dome reveals no obvious entrances, but a quick knock on the stone proves it’s hollow—he could break through, but he might risk destroying the structure entirely while doing so.

He closes his eyes lightly, breathing in deep, sifting between the scents of burnt metal and dust, teasing at the scant remnants of mana in the stones. It takes a moment—longer than it should, really, but he’s having to look at the empty spaces where he would otherwise expect ambient mana to find the shape of what he’s looking for—but he eventually finds it.

About a couple hands above the sand is a smooth pebble embedded in the stone, looking like nothing much more than gravel or more rubble. He brushes a finger across it and shoves a good handful of mana into it, overloading the meager lock and causing his hair to stand up from the static.

The ground shudders once, as from the inside the stone starts moving, opening into stale, pitch black.

Just in time too, as the wind has already started whipping against his exposed skin. He slips through the cracks of the stone and pulses his mana against the sudden silence—the silence of a tomb, a part of him notes.

Instead of wasting his phone battery, he digs out of his inventory a high level magic stone to shine against the darkness. It’s light is maybe dimmer, but cupped in his hand it gives the stones a warmer hue than a flashlight or torch would.

Unsurprisingly, the first thing he sees are stairs going down, spiralling against the wall of the dome. Stepping further in causes the entrance to slowly close back up, dust and sand raining down from the ceiling as the stones shudder once again. He ignores the exit—if this is part of a quest, there’s a good chance he won’t be able to leave until some condition is met—and heads further down. It’s not that deep, thankfully, maybe three stories at most, before he hits the bottom of the stairs.

The room opens into a rather empty stone mezzanine, with nine archways circling like a mirror of the arches above in the sand. It’s much cooler, a relief from the burning heat of the desert, and he takes a moment to just cool his lungs. His body might be resistant to most things these days, but just because something won’t kill him doesn’t make it comfortable.

“Scout around,” he says into the echoing space of the hall, watching as Shadows go spilling across the broken stone, disappearing into the darkness.

He himself steps forward towards the only thing left standing at the centre of the room. The worn marble statue doesn’t depict any creature he is familiar with, but it’s reminiscent of the Ice Elves and similar monsters. The robes suggest a spellcaster of some kind, although it is hard to tell exactly which kind—one arm and part of the torso is broken off and shattered.

“Not really a fan of stone statues these days,” he mutters, eyeing it. Even this doesn’t have any more ambient mana than the sands upstairs.

He circles a few times, but can’t find any signs of a trap or magical trigger in the statue. Eventually he has to lean back and conclude that it really is just a statue, for now. He won’t be sleeping with his back to it, however.

The combination of the statue, and the general architecture of the building, gives it a sense of ritual and worship. There are half visible reliefs in the walls, groves in the floor that speak of repetition and time, and the remnants of paint or plaster still clinging desperately to some columns. No doubt this is meant to be a temple of some kind.

“Anything?” he asks, as the first of the Shadows return. There’s a few head shakes and shrugs by the lower levelled soldiers, and eventually Igris steps forward to point down one hall.

Jin-Woo glances one last time towards the statue before turning to follow his knight further into the dungeon.

—

The next few days are hectic. With no way of knowing how long he’s going to be stuck here while the storm rages, and with no real hints from the system as to what he is meant to do, he explores what is left of the temple as much as he can.

Half the passages are collapsed, blocked off completely enough he wishes just for a moment he’d thought of saving at least one smaller scout Shadow. A climbing spider would be able to squeeze through the gaps and maneuver over the rough terrain. He can always have his Shadows dig the tunnels out, but without knowing what’s on the other side it seems shortsighted at best.

Exploring the other half is more fruitful. One hall opens up into what looks like a residential area, the remnants of molding beds and tables litter a decently sized room still painted with white plaster. Attached is a dusty kitchen, with a stone stove and a walk in pantry that is a few degrees colder than the other rooms. There’s no food left, of course, but a scrub from a Shadow and some experiments with learning fire magic net him a decently working stove and furnace.

There’s even some jars of what he assumes to be spices still sealed shut, although he doesn’t see himself opening any of those any time soon.

He does have to stop Tank from trying to eat one, though.

The hall next to the kitchen opens into a destroyed library, rows of stacks splintered and molding, books turning to dust at a touch. He doesn't stay long.

The one next to that is a practically empty room with recessed pools inset in overlapping circles in the floor. The water is stagnant, full of bloated insects, the first sign of life he’s seen yet.

It’s the last room that really interests him, however.

He picks up the first sword, it’s blade still sharp despite the dust coating the sides, and hums in thought. A kitchen, a library, a pool. All things that would fit in a temple. An armoury however, says some interesting things about what it was that was worshipped here.

He rubs his thumb against the edge of the sword to test it’s edge. Not as strong as either of the ones he is partial to, but stronger than he would expect from something obviously mass produced.

[Guard’s Emblem]  
Item Class: E  
Type: Weapon

[A simple but sturdy blade forged with dawnsteel, left to stand the winds of time…]

He puts it back, slowly wandering through the racks of weapons and armour. Most are of a similar make to the Guard’s Emblem, although a few specify other metals or materials. He stops at a row of long staves, each boasting a different focus or embellishment on one side, a few tipped in blades on the other.

“This looks promising,” he muses, eyeing them. They bristle with mana in a way nothing else much has yet. They’re much more individual than the other weapons, as well, with a variety of crystal and wood and metal.

One even had what looks like a human skull as the focus, which is an aesthetic he is more used to in Orc dungeons.

He brushes his hand against it.

[Item:The Death God’s Lover]  
Item Class: B  
Type: Mage Staff

[The stories say that it was Dirthamen’s blood from which all necromancy was born, spilt upon the ground when his mortal lover fell. That final trespass, to which the god was ever disdainful, heralded a war between the gods that to this day leaves scars across the land.]

He glances over it, humming in the back of his throat in thought. It’s a pretty enough staff, if you’re into that kind of thing. He’s never had much inclination to concentrate on spells, besides those attached to the Shadow Monarch title, despite his nominal categorisation as a mage.

He can’t really see himself using it, but it looks interesting enough that he stores it in his inventory. He can always give it to a Shadow later, one of the ones who can use magic. Or sell it for more gold to spend at the shop. It’s not like he has to worry about inventory space, after all.

Moving through the rest of the room doesn’t net much more of interest, unfortunately. The weapons and armour are all low class, despite their interesting descriptions. He’s able to get a few more clues as to the origin of the temple, a few more references to a Dirthamen, and that’s about it.

Still, it is an interesting find, and he spends a good part of a day categorising everything in the armoury and pocketing some of the more cool looking pieces. By the end of it, however, it’s been four days, and whatever quest the system is wanting to do hasn’t made itself obvious.

He’s starting to think it won’t. That he’ll either have to find it on his own. That waiting around, poking at dusty corners, isn’t likely to net him much. If he wants to figure out the puzzle, he’ll need to do more than just survive in this abandoned temple.

Luckily, he has hundreds of willing Shadows. What would take him months takes only days, if that.

—

The first thing he does is have the Shadows clear the collapsed section of the temple. He doubts anything of interest will have survived, but he’ll need the space later.

The rubble gets carted back to lay on one side of the mezzanine. It’s a mix of white stone, plaster, and sandstone. Nothing terribly useful for him, but without a way to exit while the storm is raging, there’s not much he can do but smash it into powder, and that’s likely to be an air quality issue.

As some of the Shadows are clearing the tunnels out, he has others working to purify the stagnant pools of water.

A closer look reveals piping leading further down into the ground, no doubt connected to an underground water source, but the years have rusted the metal. He has no real way of fixing that at the moment, besides having his Shadows replace the pipes entirely. Instead, he filters what water is in the pools already.

It does give him an idea, however.

Iron has already shown him that his Shadows do not need to be monsters to become a Shadow. So far the only restriction he’s found has been age of the corpse, level, and whether they are a demon. Theoretically he should be able to turn one of the newer dead insects into a Shadow—useless for combat and a waste of a slot, but small enough to scout and spy for him.

In this case, a scout for the collapsed tunnels, and to squeeze down the pipes to find the underwater lake.

“Hmm. You’ve certainly gotten bigger,” he muses to the Shadow on his finger. He’s not even sure what insect it was originally—shaped a little like a beetle, but with two pairs of wings and two pincer-like mandibles. As a Shadow, it’s twice the size that it was originally, with wings that glow a soft blue.

“ **A drone,** ” Beru notes, somewhat disdainfully.

“We don’t really have the luxury to be picky right now,” Jin-Woo points out, letting the insect crawl over his arm. “I can buy water from the shop, but that isn’t going to be sustainable. We haven’t yet found any monsters to replenish coins.”

It would take a long while to go through his reserve of coins, but he knows how tricky the system gets. If it decides to stop helping him, or he is stuck here for longer than a few weeks—

He’s been ignoring the fact that he can’t check up on his family. Even when he’d been gone, leveling up in the gates or stuck in the punishment realm, he always knew when and how he would get back. Outside the fear of death, he knew he would return.

His mother at least is healthy again, and his sister is old enough now to no longer need his care as much, but—

He thinks of the way the gates have become more frequent, more dangerous. Any level dungeon break would be fatal for a non-hunter, but if a higher level one were to break in Seoul…

Beru’s antenna twitches.

“ **A tunnel has been cleared,** ” he reports, looking towards something only he can sense.

Jin-Woo nods, kneeling down to let the beetle Shadow crawl into the pipes, instructing it to find the water source. He can’t speak to it, of course, but he should be able to feel where it is and locate the lake.

“Let’s go,” he tells Beru.

When they get there, Ignis is supervising Tank and Iron—and their respective units—clearing of the tunnel’s rubble from the entranceway.

The revealed tunnel isn’t a surprise. Worn stone with the remnants of plaster, recess for broken and rotten torches, dust and soot and debris.

What is a surprise is the amount of mana lingering on the walls and further in.

“I...Have not seen a spell like this before,” he notes, eyeing the green flames that lick around one of the torches. “Dungeons often have some sort of magical lighting, or neverending fire, but it usually still works like fire.”

The green fire is cold to the touch, and seems to have a limited area of effect—trying to move it just estingushes it.

“ **The mana remembers the shape of the fire,** ” Beru offers, poking at it with a claw.

Jin-Woo waves a hand and lights the other torch, walking forward, a trail of green fire bursting into flame behind him. At the end of the tunnel is another open room, about the size of the residential quarters. At the centre of the room is a strange, spherical object, made out of metal and slowly spinning.

He slows.

Dungeons usually are a strange mix of fantastical, rarely mixing with the modern. The cases of skyscrapers merging with castles are rare. Most dungeons seem to be designed with a certain faux-medieval style to them. So far everything in the temple has followed that.

The sphere isn’t necessarily a departure, exactly. It hums with mana, runes etched into its side, made with elegant lines and curves.

And yet, as he walks closer to examine it, he can’t help notice how... seamlessly it fits together. Magic could account for that, it is true, but even highly mana-dependent dungeons have a sort of... chaotic nature to their artifacts. A lot of jewels, twisted metal, wood.

This looks machine made, in a way. Practiced.

Touching it reveals a slight hum, metal neither cold nor warm.

“It’s drawing in mana from the surroundings,” he notes, eyes flickering around. “And then feeding it back to the runes on the walls. A mana battery of some kind.”

Heavily depleted too.

There are grooves in the floor, pieces of rotten wood in the corners, the traces of previous furniture and objects. Based on the layout, and the darker patches of stone...

“A library, an armoury, a barracks, a pool, and a mana factory of some kind.”

“ **Knowledge, protection, nest, sustenance, creation,** ” Beru adds.

“They had most of what you would have needed for long term settlement here,” Jin-Woo agrees. “They are just missing some way of having a renewable food source.”

He withdraws his hand and takes in the room again.

“...Let’s see if we can’t power it up. We might be able to light the green fires outside of the current field if it has more mana.”

—

After all that, it’s not a surprise when the insect scout leads him to a garden. The pipes seem to connect to more than one room, and following the ones from the pools eventually winds into another of the collapsed tunnels, where the remnants of what would have at some point been a greenhouse rests.

The plants are long dead, withered from a lack of water and sun, but the soil is still intact. Pipes lead to dry irrigation channels, and multiple raised beds hang from the ceiling, the dried stalks of some sort of fruit at eye level. There is even room for plants in the walls, dead moss and ivy still clinging.

Jin-Woo stands in the middle of it and crosses his arms, feeling frustration bubble in his ribs.

High above him, the storm rages on. The system is quiet, as if dead or left behind. The temple is waiting, expectant, the blueprints of a society laid out at his feet.

He has no way back home, and he is starting to believe he won’t find one easily. Whatever has brought him to this place doesn’t seem to want him to leave.

The title of Shadow Monarch is one for conquest, for battle, for the dead. It is not one for creation, or growth, or rebuilding.

The world’s weakest hunter wasn’t meant for greatness either, and yet Jin-Woo now stands as one of Korea’s strongest S-Ranks. So perhaps what he is meant for isn’t as important as what he is willing to do to succeed.

—

Weeks pass. The Shadows clear rubble, clean stone, find broken pipes and repair them, dig stairs into the underground river, plant seeds.

He finds a loom, a tanning rack, a forge. There’s a hidden room filled with shelves of silver and gold and jars sealed shut against time. He powers up the mana battery and paints the tunnels with green fire.

The storm ends, but it doesn’t matter—by the time he figures out how to work the lock, he has no real desire to leave his new home. Shadows clear the entrance of sand and start stacking the cleared rubble outside, using magic and might to repair the arch ways.

Kaisel and Beru coast through the sky, patrolling, searching, scouting.

The second week Igris stumbles upon a wingless wyvern, weak from the sun and hunger. He drags it back to the temple, where Jin-Woo is able to determine that he can extract Shadows on this realms animals as well as insects. It’s weak, although not as weak as the other animals he spies once in a while in the desert.

Lizards, vultures, snakes. Nothing that indicates any intelligence.

He figures out how to use his mana to get the water flowing, how to coax the plants into growing. He decodes the few scraps of paper left in the library, learning piece by piece of a society long lost, of wars and rebellion and mortal gods of mana.

Still the system is quiet.

He buys from the shop what he cannot salvage or make. Starts decorating the barracks as he would his room, starts a collection of breathable clothing to deal with the heat, displays the more interesting artifacts.

His Shadows find a cave system, a network of interconnecting tunnels and holes that stretch for kilometres in every direction.

It is there that he finds the first sign of something more.

Something hungry, aggressive. Remnants of bones and flesh, a corruption of the stone itself seeping into pools of blood. The farther down he goes, the more echoes seem to ring out, whispers and voices too quiet to make out.

Scraps of fabric, broken blades, black ichor smeared across broken stone.

“Maybe this is a dungeon after all,” he says, peering into the darkness. Far, far below a stone bridge is teeming with milling bodies of strange creatures. Black armour, twisted metal, rotten meat.

He thumbs at his dagger, body still and waiting.

He might have more control than some S-Ranks, but after weeks of nothing, the idea of a fight is exhilarating. A new monster to test himself on, a chance for more Shadows, to expand his limits and level even more—

A larger figure walks through the crowd, taller, larger, helmet of twisting metal towering a good foot above the rest. Jin-Woo’s eyes latch on it, fingers twitching.

[Hurlock Alpha]

—

“The Forbidden Oasis, again?” Dorian huffs, strapping his strap to the mount. “I have only just gotten the sand out of my robes.”

“Bits starting to itch?” Bull asks, looking up with a grin.

“I don’t want to hear that from you,” Dorian snips, raising a brow.

“And I don’t want to know what you mean by that,” Adaar interrupts, throwing her legs over the not-so-patiently waiting dracolisk.

“Why are we going back?” Varric asks, looking amused. He’s already on his horse, looking as comfortable—which as a Dwarf means not at all—as he can be. She makes a note—again—to see about getting him a war pony of some sort.

“We’re not sure yet,” Adaar replies, nudging her beast to head to the front of the train. “Scouts are reporting some odd movement in the area. Might be darkspawn.”

“Isn’t that a Grey Warden’s concern? Why is the Inquisition getting involved?” Dorian complains.

“Not like the Grey Wardens are around much right now. ‘Sides, Darkspawn don’t move for much besides a full on Blight—if they’re doing it now it would mean—” Bull trails off.

“We have another problem. Corypheus is a Darkspawn—a very intelligent one, and if he somehow gets the rest of them under his control—” Varric continues.

“Yes, yes. Bad things, fire and ruin, et cetera et cetera,” Adaar sighs.

“I didn’t know you knew Tevene,” Dorian laughs, nudging his horse after her. “But it is true, if it’s not a Blight or Corypheus that is the cause of the Darkspawn movement, I do not know what it would be.”

“Bigger predator?” Bull offers.

“What’s bigger than Darkspawn? They taint everything, and it’s not like anything is going to be hunting them besides the Grey Wardens and the Legion,” Varric points out.

“We’ll find out,” Adaar returns, cracking her neck. She’s not looking forward to another few weeks stuck in the heat, slowly sweating her body weight and feeling her horns peel off layer by layer. Still, it is better than being stuck up in the war room trying to stretch their people thinner. “Scouts were talking about some old ruins that popped up out in the Wastes.”

“Popped out as in, what exactly?” Dorian asks suspiciously, turning in his saddle to peer at her. “That does not seem natural.”

She shrugs.

“I suppose we will see. Storm might have just revealed it. I’m told the dunes shift sometimes, and things that are buried can get exposed. Rarely.”

“Right. That’s not concerning at all,” he snorts. “Why did you need me for this venture?”

“You said you were bored. Something something the complete ineptitude of southern mage libraries something something surrounded by poorly written treatises on the Fade, something something.”

Bull snorts, causing Dorian to turn his ire on the other Qunari in their party.

“Yes, well. That did not mean you had to bring me to the desert,” Dorian snarks, faux-affront in full effect. He really must have been bored—he only gets this spirited when he is excited and trying to hide it.

“Cheer up Sparkles, it could be the Fallow Mire,” Varric muses, to Dorian’s exaggerated shudder.

“Thank the Maker for small mercies,” he allows.

Adaar lets the banter fall over her, the good humour of her party keeping her warm in the cold of the mountains.

She would have brought Solas with her, since they might have to explore the ruins—but he still hasn’t returned from grieving Wisdom. As bad as she feels about it, it does free up space to get Dorian out of Skyhold, make him forget about his father for a little while. It says something, she thinks, that the danger of Darkspawn and Corypheus is less stressful than the personal. Even Varric is worried about Hawke. Even Bull is stressed about what it means to no longer be Qun. It is those little worries about her companions—her friends, her family—that consume her.

The concern about Darkspawn and Corypheus is still there, of course, buzzing in the back of her head. Just as the concern about the rifts and the Red Templars and the Chantry hasn’t disappeared now that the Breach is gone. It’s always one thing after another, one more problem to fix, one more decision to make.

Still to this day she has no idea how she has gotten to the position that she has—Herald of a religion she doesn’t even believe in, leader of a whole organisation attempting to save the world from ruin.

She just hopes that whatever they find around the next corner won’t be more bad news.


	2. A Meeting in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jin-Woo has the start of the home, the Inquisition has a desire to, as mtv would say, check that crib out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know the drill, join me on ( [ Discord ](https://discord.gg/cun3KPZ)) if you want to chat fanfics or general nerdery (this includes sneak peeks at fics and art!!)

The strange creatures underground—Darkspawn, according to the system’s overlay—don’t net anything in terms of coin, but they’re useful in other ways. The resources Jin-Woo can harvest from them is as good a distraction as any, both in helping him settle in and become less reliant on the shop, and in learning more about his surroundings.

It seems whatever society Darkspawn have, they mostly cannibalise from previous ruins and people, and so it’s not just their own twisted metal and instruments Jin-Woo finds, but more elegant creations as well. Weapons, art, pottery. Even clockwork.

If nothing else, the tunnels are rife with scrap metal, easily melted down in the old forge one of the Shadows unearthed. There’s a marked difference between the architecture and technology of the temple and the tunnels, as well. Some of it seems to be age—the tunnels are newer—but some of it makes him think there might have been two different civilisations in the area. It’s interesting to see, since most dungeons only hold one apex society at a time.

And, of course, there’s the Darkspawn bodies themselves.

“It’s a good thing I’m immune to poisons,” Jin-Woo mutters, unsticking his dagger out of the Alpha’s back. It only took a few fights before he noticed his passive skills triggering every time he got Darkspawn blood on him—and although he can’t tell what sort of poison it is, based off of the corrupted feel to the mana in the tunnels, he can guess.

He stares down at the broken body and slips his mana into its bones, taking a moment to acclimate to the feeling of the twisted mana still lingering. It’s always a slightly different feeling, extracting the Shadow of a different species for the first time. No one creature is the same, even if the end result looks similar.

“ **Arise** ,” he orders, mana surging, kicking up dust and blood as the spell takes hold. Slowly, like tar being pulled from a pool, the Shadow stretches and breaths, standing with an overly smooth motion that looks just as unreal as it’s appearance. The resulting Shadow is not quite as big as some of his stronger units, but bigger than it was in life, bristling with slowly-pulsing blue spikes and ridges.

It stands at attention, not quite as differential as Beru or Igris, but not quite as impolite as Tank or Iron either. From what he can see, the Darkspawn are a mix of hive mind and individuality—there was some sort of communication, and enough sentience for the crafting of armour and weapons and such, but not much in the way of personality.

“Let’s see,” he muses, staring at the input screen in front of him. “The system called you a Hurlock Alpha, so something like First as a name should be fine?”

The newly named First doesn’t react much to being named, and Jin-Woo stares for a moment at it before blinking and turning to investigate the rest of the tunnel. A well-behaved Shadow will be a change of pace from the other, more excitable high levels, but it is somehow a bit of a disappointment. If First could talk, then at least he might be able to get some direct answers to where he’s found himself.

“Gather anything that looks useful,” he tells the milling Shadows, sheathing his weapons back into their inventory space. A glance at the bodies strewn about leave him with another question—Darkspawn have no creature cores.

He frowns.

Although there have been dungeons without cores, they’ve all been system-created dungeons where the Shadow extract power doesn’t work. Like the Demons from the destroyed Seoul. And even if cores aren’t necessary for extraction—he’s been able to extract humans after all—it still seems strange that these ones wouldn't.

And a shame. Creature cores are extremely useful.

He moves through the tunnel, ignoring the Shadows as they go about gathering twisted metal armour and curiously poking at some of the old mechanisms. Some of the tunnels seem to employ the same mana torches as he found in the temple, whereas other portions are completely dark or else lit by regular fire. It is one offshoot, dim and cramped, half blocked by old stone rubble, that he finds the corpse.

He blinks as something catches the corner of his eye. A glint of dirty metal only visible because of the light of Jin-Woo’s torch, different somehow from all the other bits and pieces of metal scrap littering the ground.

He pauses, waving off Igris as the Shadow pauses with him, and pivots to duck down into the nook. It’s a small opening, more of a crawl space than anything else, and faintly covered with mildew and rot. Bringing the fire closer reveals a crumpled pile of bones.

“Well,” he mutters, taking in the size and features he can still make out—including a rather large beard—that proves that whatever the tunnels were originally built for, the Darkspawn weren’t, or still aren’t, the only inhabitants.

He crouches down and pris off the bit of metal that caught his eye—a ring, on a skeletal hand still clutching a small book tight enough that it takes some force to slip both off.

The book, completely illogically, seems perfectly structurally sound, despite the years it must have weathered since the corpse’s death. Outside of some yellowing and dust, the paper even still feels perfectly useable.

He backs up, slipping out of the crawl space to nod to Igris—who, he notes, did not continue on like Jin-Woo gestured him to—and passes over the torch so he can use both hands to flip through and read.

_...Tis the eighth of the month, now, or at least close enough that it matters little. It’s been at least six weeks now, since they’ve strapped me into this hunk of metal and placed a sword in hand, and I’ve not died yet. Even if I am, for all sense and purposes, dead already._

_Dead but not. Living, but with a funeral already had. The others keep saying it don’t matter any, since we’re all gonna die down here as is, fighting the blighted darkspawn, either by blade or blight or fucking hunger._

_For fucks sake, as if that’s meant to be a comfort. Oh, not dead yet! But close enough to count._

_One of these days I’d like to see all those fuckers in their nice cushy strongholds back home deal with being “dead” like this, worthless ‘cept for their upcoming tragedy._

_...I think I might see that soon, if things go the way they are looking to be. The darkspawn are growing, and the available fighters to drive them back fewer. We lost five in the last raid, and so far there’s been no reinforcements. The darkspawn are getting closer and closer to the outposts._

_What use is it, to kill off so many dwarves—to turn them into the Legion—if it’s not even going to work?_

There’s more, talk about a nearby camp, the ‘Legion’ and their fighters, a bit on individual Darkspawn too. Jin-Woo reads that bit with interest, but although it tells him a lot about individual Darkspawn classifications and abilities, it seems like any actual information on where they come from or what they want is just as much a mystery to these dwarves as it is to Jin-Woo.

But that’s the page he keeps coming back to—there’s no good reason to, no important information or strategy to be gleaned by its sparse words.

Still, it resonates with him in a way.

—

“So, what have we got?” Adaar asks, flicking a strand of hair off of her wet forehead. They’ve been in the desert for only a few hours now, and yet she already feels like a piece of cheese left to sweat on the windowsill.

“It’s been quiet for the most part, since you were last here,” Scout Harding replies, gesturing through the tent flap to seat the party in the comparably cooler shade. There’s a genuine sigh of relief from the group—even Bull and Dorian, who are both used to hotter climates than most others in the Inquisition.

“The reports of ruins?” Adaar prompts, once everyone is settled.

“It’s a strange thing for sure,” Scout Harding starts, bringing out a map that’s already been marked. “At first we thought it was just one of the dunes shifting—we’ve had a few intense storms and quakes in the region lately. But one of the scouts got close enough to see stone rubble, before the last storm hit.”

“That’s it?” Varric asks, eyeing the map with interest and a bit of resignation, visibly calculating how far they’ll have to travel into the wastes.

“We thought so at first, but once the storm passed we sent someone to go check on it and, well…” Scout Harding hesitates, looking a little bemused.

“What? Let me guess, a cult of blood mages? A giant darkspawn ogre? Elven ghosts?” Dorian pipes up from where he’s been trying to groom his hair back into place.

“No, nothing that big. It’s just when the first reports came in, it appeared like a ruin, but when we checked again, it looked fully repaired. In what was only a couple days.”

There’s a pause from the group, and Adaar feels her mouth twist down. That’s not a good sign. Not necessarily a bad sign either, but it’s certainly a sign of something.

“Magic then?” Dorian continues, looking more interested now. At his side the Iron Bull looks less so.

“I’m not aware of any magic that would repair a complete ruin in a few days,” Adaar points out. “If such a thing exists, it would have to be pretty old and rare.”

“Oh for—really?” Dorian says, raising a brow and then shaking his head at the other’s expressions. “I knew you southern mages are woefully uneducated but—truly? No building magics?”

“Not something the Chantry likes teaching,” Bull muses. “Imagine, living in a magic house, never sure when the spell will end up spit out demons.”

“That’s not how—”

“Ok, so magic builders, sure,” Varric interrupts. “If that’s a skill Tevinter has, then it goes to assume we’re looking at Venatori?”

“Of course,” Dorian groans. “When is it not Venatori.”

“Thought all the evil magisters would be nostalgic for you,” Bull muses idly, and then has to dodge Dorian’s swipe in retaliation.

“Thank you, Scout Harding,” Adaar says instead of commenting on the maturity level of her top level fighters. “We’ll check it out. Let us know if there’s anything else in the area that needs looking at while we’re out.”

“Sure thing, Inquisitor.”

They get the map rolled up and some more minor business dealt with, and then eventually Scout Harding leaves them to prepare for the upcoming journey.

Varric settles on one of the seats and props his chin on his hand.

“So. What would the Venatori be wanting with an old ruin in the desert?”

“Could be anything, at this point. Perhaps it’s a loci for magic, or it holds some lost nugget of history or some such. We’ve already seen Corypheus go after some of the old Elven relics, in an effort to bolster his own power, and even before the crazed Darkspawn Magister came onto the scene, the Venatori have always been interested in power,” Dorian replies idly, riffling through one of the bags.

“If it was a ruin that’s been under the sand for so long, what could they even expect to be there? Anything useful would have rotten at this point,” Bull points out.

“Not if it’s magical, or been preserved with magic. Just think of all the lovely runes and gear our dear Inquisitor has found in our travels, and that’s without looking for it. The South is strangely rife with things.”

Varric feels his attention sharpen at that.

“And Tevinter isn’t?”

Dorian looks up and faintly frowns.

“You know, now that you mention it...no. Anything obvious has been picked clean by now, and although there’s always rumours of lost tombs under the cities, there’s never anything actually found. Strange, you would think with how paranoid some Magisters are, there would be some forgotten library or armoury somewhere.”

“Maybe it’s because they’re paranoid,” Adaar points out, moving through the tent and nonchalantly shrugging her shirt off to dunk her head into a nearby bucket of water. The others as a whole politely look away as she then starts the scrub the sand off.

“Or most of it hasn’t had the chance to be left forgotten and then found a couple years later,” Varric adds. “If all this creepy magic shit is normal magic shit, why would it be a big deal that someone tossed it out and someone else picked it up?”

Dorian points to him in agreement and sighs.

“Ah, reminds me of the spell swapping the universities would do—have I ever told you about the time I sold a minor necromancy spell to raise a mouse to one of the dean’s favourites in return for a very specific translation spell? And then I was the one blamed for the resulting plague! The nerve—”

—

Here is what Jin-Woo learns in the next few days of exploring the tunnels and killing Darkspawn:

The Darkspawn are around the level of a C-Rank monster, unless it’s one of the unique classes, who shoot up to A or S-Rank. Usually there’s only one or two S-Ranks in a group, but from evidence left behind and what little he can learn from the Darkspawn themselves, he gets the feeling they’re not the highest ranking either.

The ‘Dwarves’ that the Darkspawn have overtaken in the area are similar to some of the dwarven species he’s encountered in previous dungeons. They have blocky, art deco styled architecture with limited mechanical constructs, extremely well-forged armour and weapons, and a marked grudge against the Darkspawn. He stumbles across a few other corpses, but not enough for the amount of wreckage the tunnels are left in. Either the bulk of the Dwarves were able to evacuate somewhere, or the Darkspawn have been doing something with the bodies.

Also, Darkspawn make everything stink like rot and blood, and Jin-Woo is forced to buy industrial soap from the shop before he even starts to feel slightly clean. It certainly makes him all the more interested in getting the pipe system in the temple fixed.

As he returns to the temple, having looted and stripped most of the nearby tunnels for anything useful, he counts his new Shadows contemplatively. He’s decided to only extract the higher rank specimens: the Alphas, Omegas, Shrieks. They’re rare, but worth it over the rank and file, who at this point would be extremely low-leveled in comparison with Jin-Woo’s other Shadows.

Each one has acted, despite their level, like what Jin-Woo remembers of the common soldier Shadows he originally started with. Loyal, yes, but bland in comparison to the personality and quirks of Igris and his ilk.

Perhaps that will change with time, but it is still an interesting thing to note—usually personality seems to be tied to level and rank, after all.

“ **Approaching life signs** ,” Beru says, snapping to attention. Jin-Woo glances up and looks at where the ant king is staring—in the direction of the Temple entrance, so whatever life form it is, it’s not Darkspawn.

“How many?” he asks, placing the soap back down into the basin. He dries his hands on a towel and shrugs his coat back on. At his side, a silent First is quietly moving some of the newly forged pipes into place—Jin-Woo has vague plans of figuring out how to supply the pools with hot water, either with magic or with geothermal heat.

“ **Four, one with enough mana to be a spell caster** ,” Beru answers, practically vibrating with violence.

Interesting. So far there haven’t been any mages in the Darkspawn numbers, and besides the mana battery and the staves in the armoury, few evidence of ongoing magic.

“Should we check it out?” he asks, somewhat facetiously. Of course the Shadows, who are loyal to the point of overprotective violence, would want to check out a potential enemy.

“Stay back, don’t be seen just yet,” he tells Beru, before the ant king can kill off the newcomers too quickly. “Igris, have the others continue fixing up the workshop, but keep them quiet.”

The knight bows, and then gathers the working Shadows and departs. Jin-Woo has to quietly admit to some particular fondness for his unique Shadow—both in combat prowess, and in general demeanor. Even Beru, despite being the one who can speak, is a handful at times.

He moves through the temple, his own Shadow bristling slightly in the eerie light of the newly-established mana torches. Passing by the statue—still broken, out of some sort of paranoia on Jin-Woo’s part—makes him wonder at what sort of creature could be coming. It stands to reason, if the underground is territory to Darkspawn and Dwarves, then whatever elven-like creature the statue represents would rule the surface. Is that not how these sort of stories go?

“Beru,” he warns when he feels the Shadow settle into his own. “Let me handle it.”

The last thing he wants is another Cha Hae-In situation. He doubts, considering the power level of all the creatures he’s found so far, that whatever the four above are, they will be much of a threat. And, more to the point, he’d rather learn what he can from them before killing them.

There’s a sense of agreement from below his feet, a non verbal feeling of loyalty and chagrin, and he sighs, even as he sends a wave of mana up towards the stone stairs. His senses are not quite the same as the ant king, but after a moment he can make out the four small figures coming closer. They’re almost directly on top of the temple itself.

He debates just opening the door and letting them come down the steps, but then—he has a Shadow now for situations like this, doesn’t he?

He calls forth the insect Shadow and sends it upwards with very specific orders. He hasn’t had a need to use Shadow Exchange today, and so it will be a very simple thing to have the insect get behind them and then switch spots with it. And with the size and speed of the small thing, it’s very unlikely it will be noticed.

—

“I don’t like the look of that,” Bull says, squinting over the glare of the setting sun.

The structure they’re overlooking is a strange building, made from sun-bleached stone. The arches that surround the centre dome reach over the dune they’re standing on, a good few meters. The general shape and feel of the place feels old Elven, but Elven ruins these days are rarely as well-kept and in repair.

“Some of those look newly repaired,” Varric points out, gesturing to where the stone on one of the arches changes halfway through.

On his other side, Dorian frowns, but says nothing in reply.

Adaar hefts her axe idly as she eyes the rest of the structure. Compared to the arches, the dome is rather plain—stone, yes, but with no visible doors or embellishments. There’s no sign from the outside of Venatori occupation, but there’s not much to see either way.

“Hard to imagine this buried under sand,” she says, eventually, straightening. “The arches, at least. The dome could be just another dune if you don’t look too closely.”

“Doesn’t seem like the sort of place Venatori would be interested in,” Varric muses, hefting Bianca a little closer. “I’m assuming the plan is no plan, as usual?”

“The plan is going in and checking things out,” Adaar replies.

“So no plan, got it.”

Adaar just rolls her yes, before moving to slide carefully down the slope of the dune they’re standing on. The others follow, although it takes a moment for Dorian to join.

Varric cuts his eyes over and raises a brow in silent question, but the mage just shakes his head with a bit of a frustrated look in his eye. Not something he is sure of yet, then.

“No obvious entrances,” Bull reports, after they spend a few moments walking the outskirts of the dome. “We could break in with a few concentrated shield bashes, but none of us use shields.”

Eyes cut towards Dorian, who huffs with rolled eyes.

“Oh, so now you want my destructive spells? Usually it’s all ‘but Dorian, you’re scaring the locals’ and ‘Dorian please stop exploding goats’.”

Varric rolls his own eyes.

“You keep saying the exploding goat incident was an accident,” he reminds, to which Dorian studiously ignores him.

“Can you do it or not?” Adaar asks, knocking a hand against the stone wall, leaning close to try and listen to the sound.

“Can I do it? Of course I can do it,” Dorian snorts, shaking his head. “But I don’t need to.”

He walks up, eyes slightly furrowed as he places a hand on the stone, concentrating. From behind, Varric shares a glance with Bull, who only shrugs, hand on his axe and attention mostly on potential ambushes.

“It’s not a lock I’m familiar with, but it should—” Dorian mutters, before there’s a sound of grinding stone and Adaar has to take a leap back or else fall through the sudden hole in the stone.

“Oh for fucks sake,” she snaps, shaking out her hand at the static still clinging to her skin at the sudden rush of magic.

“Sorry,” Dorian replies, looking unrepentant. “It’s not quite like how certain door locks are spelled in Tevinter, but it was similar enough to identify.”

“So that fully confirms Venatori?” Bull asks, loping up to stand at Adaar’s side and peer into the dark.

“Not exactly,” Dorian starts, looking frustrated. “It’s an older variation, very inefficient. Any Magister worth their salt would have a dozen better spells under their belt—this particular variation hasn’t been used in generations, since it requires a steady drain of mana and is only cost effective in areas with a high concentration of such.”

“And this isn’t that sort of place?” Varric asks. He’s not as excited as the qunari seem to be at going underground, but he is curious at Dorian’s discomforted expression.

“Not exactly,” Dorian replies. “It’s—hard to describe. The desert is practically empty of any mana—did you know some scholars attribute water and plant life to the connection to the Fade?—But, well, there is certainly something here. There’s a lot more ambient mana here than there should be.”

“So, all I’m hearing is ‘spooky magic shit, probably Venatori’,” Bull pipes up.

“Whatever the case, we should be careful,” Adaar interrupts, ignoring the other’s incredulous looks at the hypocrisy. “Stay close, be aware of traps. Dorian, I want you up with me scanning for anything out of the ordinary. Bull, keep an eye on our backs.”

And so they descend.

“At least it’s cooler in here,” Varric mutters, as they all sigh in relief at the shade. It is a good couple degrees cooler than expected even—more than just what would be found by a few meters underground and a lack of sun.

“Interesting. The stones have cooling spells carved into them—not all of them are active, but enough,” Dorian muses, looking to be a second away from stopping to investigate further.

“Later,” Adaar promises, leading them further down the stone steps.

It soon expands into a large, circular room, with familiar stone arches and a single broken statue, the make of which identifies the origin at least of the ruin. Veilfire burns at their approach, throwing the whole scene into eerie green light, casting strange shadows on the wall and floor.

It’s rather empty, for a reclaimed ruin. No bandit camp, no red lyrium, no sign of habitation. It’s almost uncannily clean, outside of a few pieces of broken masonry laying in corners. Arches leading into tunnels surround the room like a sunburst.

“Ancient Elven, at least. I do believe that is a depiction of one of the gods, although I can’t be sure which one,” Dorian muses, eyeing the statue. “Presumably this was a temple of some kind, then. Solas would know more.”

“I can hear water,” Bull offers, slowly. “Either there’s an underground river here, or someone has found a way to bring the oasis underground.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Varric replies, eyeing the tunnels. “Anyone else feeling like something isn’t quite right here?”

“Quite,” Dorian agrees.

Adaar hums in thought, letting her axe rest against the floor and leaning on it, a calculated casual pose that settles in the tense air uneasily. One claw tabs against the metal consideringly.

“Boss?” Bull asks, when she stays silent for a while.

“Nothing,” she says, straightening. “Let’s look closer. If there is Venatori here, we should figure out what they’re planning before they return.”

“What else? Death and destruction and Tevinter superiority,” Dorian snorts. “I’m sure there’s a suitably gruesome blood magic ritual tucked away somewhere in here we’ll need to disrupt.”

“Lovely,” Varric sighs, moving to follow Adaar towards one of the tunnels. Bull just clasps a hand onto his shoulder in sympathy.

The tunnels themselves are just as well kept as the central room, with more veilfire and runes on the walls and small, discreet carvings along the floor and ceiling. As they walk, Dorian keeps up a fluid, quiet train of thought on their origins and purpose, reminding the group as a whole that as much as he pretends otherwise, he is as much of a scholar as Solas himself is.

Adaar, by contrast, is as quiet as a mouse, the back of her neck thick with tension. Although Varric isn't quite sure what she’s seeing that he or Bull isn’t—if Bull is seeing something at least he’s not showing it—he recognises the signs of something about to immediately explode. It’s never a good time when the Inquisitor gets quiet for too long.

The first tunnel opens up after a few moments into a bathing room of some kind, with pools of clear water and a stack of white—new—cloth against one stone bench.

“Oh, pipes!” Dorian says, perking up. “I wasn’t aware the South even had plumbing.”

“They don’t,” Bull replies, eye flicking about. “Outside of a few extremely wealthy estates, at least.”

Adaar steps closer to one of the pools, crouching to inspect it.

“Most Fereldan water systems use gravity to move the water around,” she says, quietly. “The piping here is going underground, however. Unless there’s a water tower somewhere close by being fed by a river, I’m not sure this is Southern plumbing at all.”

There’s quiet, as the group inspects the room and carefully doesn’t look at Adaar or Bull. They’ve been, for the past couple months, tastefully ignoring any reference to Adaar’s time outside of Southern Thedas.

“The Dwarves have plumbing,” Varric offers after a couple moments of awkward silence. “And we are underground.”

“This is an Elven temple though—” Dorian starts, only to shake his head a bit. “Ah, but Solas is always speaking of how advanced the old Elves were, so perhaps they had a clever way of moving water long distances.”

Adaar stands again, and takes one last look at the room.

“The cloth confirms there’s modern inhabitants here. Let’s continue on.”

She steps up next to Bull and nudges him softly, before turning to lead back the way they came.

—

The intruders are extremely fascinating. Hidden behind them in the shadow of another dune, Jin-Woo catalogues them quietly, even as his brain is moving quicker than he can keep up with. They’re high level—higher level than the Darkspawn even—and so widely unique in physiology and demeanor he has to raise his estimation of the number of species living in the dungeon.

Two are large, horned creatures similar to some of the demon clans, although washed out and grey. One is squat and square, reminiscent of the bodies he’s found of the Dwarves—did they survive after all, and evacuate to the surface?

And—

One of them is human.

Jin-Woo doesn’t, at first, realise the implication of that. He’s too busy cataloguing the differences and the potential skill level of the fighters, using the limited information the system is giving him and what he can see visually. He would use a scan of some sort, but without knowing the specialisation of the mage class, he’d risk being detected.

One of the horned creatures is much higher level than the others, and so his attention is naturally drawn to her. He assumes, at first, that she’s the mage class—except her equipment is all wrong for it.

Tailing them as they skid down the dune isn’t hard, especially not with his assassin skills letting him blend into the sand. He’s able to get close enough to hear their conversation, which distracts him even further.

Until the mage opens the door.

His eyes immediately snap to the man, taking in the robes and the lithe body and the inquisitive words. It’s not the same sort of spells he’s used to seeing from other Hunters—if anything, it’s more like what Jin-Woo does, shaping magic without a specific blueprint—and now that he looks closer he can’t shake off the similarities.

Oh, not in looks.

But something about the feeling of his mana is... familiar.

And then, of course, he notices what the system has categorized him as.

[Dorian Pavus, Necromancer, Human]

—

Humans are Hunters. Dungeon creatures are monsters.

What does that make Jin-Woo?

—

They clear a few more tunnels—still with no signs of Venatori—before Adaar orders them back into the main chamber to rest.

He’s not sure he gets her strategy there, since there’s still a few places they haven’t determined as safe yet and there’s no real need to camp quite yet, especially since they’re now out of the sun. But, we’ll, she is the boss.

Bull settles next to Dorian and watches their leader pace gently around.

Dorian, for his part, is furiously writing in a leather-bound book, chewing on the end of his quill as he does so. Bull has to wonder at that—that Dorian, always so conscious of how people see him, would have a tell obvious as that. Makes him think it’s done on purpose, a little flaw to keep the rest of his supposed perfection that much more interesting.

“I think we can conclude there’s been at least three separate occupations,” Dorian says, after a while, causing the rest to look over.

“The original builders and whoever is here now is obvious, where are you getting the third one?” Varric asks.

Bull leans back.

“The timing. Based on that barracks we found, there’s only one active inhabitant right now—one bed, one dresser, one set of clothing—but there’s no way only one person could have repaired what the scouts were describing as a ruin this fast. So, you have the original builders, the ones that unearthed and repaired it, and the current inhabitant,” Bull points out.

“Where did the second group go, then?” Varric asks, looking skeptical. “They just what, showed up to repair something and then left it for the taking?”

“Why not? Stranger things have happened,” Dorian snorts. “We still don’t know how—or if—this relates to the Darkspawn sightings. It could be that whoever tried to settle here were all killed by the Darkspawn and we’re dealing with a sole survivor. Who is now mysteriously missing.”

“If one of those tunnels leads to a thaig…” Varric trails off, face twisting. “This better not be a Deep Roads entrance.”

“Could it be Grey Wardens? We still don’t really know where they’ve gone—”

There’s the sound of steps stopping, and Bull notes that he’s not the only one who goes silent to watch as Adaar crosses her arms to stare up at the central statue.

“A sole survivor mysteriously missing? No—simply biding their time. When are you planning on coming out, now? You’ve been watching for a while as we trample all over your home.”

Bull feels a shiver crawl down his back, even as Dorian frowns at his side—no doubt to question Adaar’s words.

Dorian’s mouth snaps shut, however, when a voice answers.

“Wasn’t sure if I was going to kill you yet.”

Jerking around, Bull just manages to catch a glimpse of lyrium blue eyes and crossed arms idly leaning against the wall of the tunnel they came from, half in shadow. His hands are already on his axe before the words register, but Adaar just holds up a hand.

“I suppose I would do the same if some strangers broke into my home,” Adaar replies without turning, posture disquietly casual. “Have you decided?”

“Not quite,” the voice says, perfectly calm. “I suppose it depends on your answers to a few questions.”

A flicker of eyes, as the stranger’s attention shifts away from Adaar to Bull, Varric, and Dorian.

“Starting with what a human necromancer is doing here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You do not know the pain I went through trying to logic my way out of Jin-Woo just killing the inquisition party off before they even meet


End file.
